


of cold and clammy skin

by tobioiisms



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Family, Family Fluff, Gay, Love, M/M, Post-Canon, like wtf else can u tag this as, soft ???, straight up gay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-21
Updated: 2017-02-21
Packaged: 2018-09-26 00:41:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9854303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tobioiisms/pseuds/tobioiisms
Summary: and with you, i find home.





	

They've done it. They've defeated the Galra.

Most of them had a home to go to after this. Pidge found her father, her brother, and they were alive. It was good to see her with her family again after she'd been separated for so long. Her mother was just as happy to see her on their first stop back to Earth. She cried and brought the three of them into her arms, scolded them, but all the more sobbed anyway. It touched even Keith.

Their second stop was for the Samoan Islands where Hunk had grown up, where most of his family had been reluctant to let him go in the first place. They apparently hadn't wanted him to go to America, but he had insisted on the Garrison. They're all overjoyed to see him the moment he returns, wrapping his entire frame around many bodies at once. There are mothers, brothers, sisters...the largest family. In truth, it suit Hunk.

And then they visit Shiro's family. It's a small family, one that Keith knew the most (with the exception of Shiro, obviously) and they recognized him almost immediately. Shiro's older and younger brother, his father and mother, they both smile at him and Keith smiles back with the smallest wave. They were always kind people and Keith knows that Shiro's kindness gene was most definitely not singular to him, for his family was projecting that sort of thing brighter than any of them could. Well, maybe with Hunk as an exception. He was the Yellow Paladin, after all.

At this point, Lance and Keith are the only two left. Allura and Coran were transporting the Paladin's back to their select homes simply because the lions would be staying in their captivity now. They had their own plans for their future in space, and Keith and Lance had to get back to their own situations. Lance buzzed with excitement and it was the sort of expression that filled Keith's entire chest and lungs with flowers and warmth. Lance gave that feeling to other people, but...it was obvious that he was feeling the happiest, the most excited to go back to his family after this.

On the contrary, Keith's chest burns with the deepest ache when he thinks about the lack of his home. His mother, who he has never found in all of his travels, is still missing. She's the family member that he feels closest to, although Keith has to wonder with morbid thoughts if she was even still alive. It broke his chest to think about. His father was another story. If he was still alive, Keith didn't want to find him. Finding someone who had walked out on him...it wasn't exactly appealing to the former Red Paladin of Voltron.

"Keith," Lance interrupts as he breaks Keith's deep internal thoughts. He doesn't even remember Lance entering his private room, but it hardly bothered him at this point. Lance was welcome anytime. Lance's frame makes the bed whine in protest as he sits close to him, their sides touching and, without skipping a beat, Keith lets his head fall onto his shoulder. He wonders when he'd become so soft, when Lance had turned a fire into a spark, then into cold ashes.

"Yeah?" Keith breathes, the back of his palm rested up against Lance's, yearning to link their fingers, but he shows some restraint. How he could still remain somewhat shy after all this time baffled him.

"You okay? I mean, you're obviously not, but I don't know how else to start this," Lance begins with a rather scrambled attitude, his hand immediately fumbling for Keith's without a second thought. Keith doesn't tell him how glad he is with words, but when he looks up to him and their eyes meet, Keith has a feeling that Lance can see it. His palm is cold and clammy, and Keith immediately knows that something is on his mind, as if his rambling wasn't enough already.

"Just tell me what it is, Lance. I know we'll always see each other in the future, but...this is gonna be the last time we're in this room. If you've got something in that head of yours, don't choose now to hesitate." He knows how his words might sound, but Keith's tone betrays him as he once again falls soft against Lance. A fire truly could be calmed by water's blast.

As Lance inhales deeply, he rests the weight of his skull atop of Keith's so that the two can become close and warm together, and it's a position that Keith's always liked. The more time passes, the colder and clammier Lance's palm becomes, and it doesn't exactly meld well with Keith's naturally chilled palms. His eyes slip closed, waiting for Lance to say something, anything, and he can only hear breathing for a few more moments before words spill out.

"I want you to come home with me. To Cuba. To Varadero."

It's a powerful statement, one that brings Keith's eyes to snap open in a near violent awakening, the light flushing to his irises almost instantly. Keith wants to jerk his head up, but he forces his muscles to move slowly so that they don't slam their heads against one another, or worse, the ceiling. The shock doesn't stem from the fact that Keith is against such actions, but more from the fact that he never thought that Lance would present them in the first place.

"...To...visit?" It's muttered unintelligibly, in case Lance meant something that held far less permanence. It's a mechanism so that Keith doesn't build up his hopes, only to let them crash down once more.

"Come on Keith, don't be an idiot about this. To live! To meet my family and stay with us!" Lance outbursts with one outstretched arm, still clinging onto Keith's palm with the same clamminess as before, only his palm is warm now. Sweat, probably. He's suddenly a lot shyer than before, head dipping down so that Keith can't see anything but a crown of brown hair, and Keith finds himself wishing more and more that he could see his face. "Look...Keith. You're my family. You're not just someone I love or anything like that. That's just a part of you. When I said that I want to go back to see my family, I mean it, but if I have to leave behind another part of it...I can't bear it. I can't do that again, Keith, I just can't."

It's a short period of time before Lance's palms reach up to cup against Keith's cheeks, to bring their foreheads together as Lance's eyes slip closed and their breaths intertwine. Keith's opened hues spot a tint of pink to Lance's cheeks, and he can only smile in fondness.

"Please...please come to Varadero with me. My family will love you."

There's a call through Lance's nearby helmet that they've arrived in Varadero, that Lance's family is waiting for him, and it's when Keith knows that he doesn't have much time to respond. He doesn't need it though, doesn't need centuries to decide a response that he truthfully only needs seconds for.

"I will. I'll come with you," Keith mutters in softness as he breathes the same air as Lance does, a smile curling at his lips as they touch hands once more.

His palms are no longer cold or clammy.

* * *

 

When Lance had mentioned that his family was large, he hadn't been kidding. They leave the Castle with their goodbyes to Allura and Coran (and Blue and Red), the Castle departs with a heavy atmosphere. Still, Lance's bright atmosphere and the extensive family that waits at Lance's childhood home changes that almost immediately as Lance's hand leaves Keith's and he goes diving towards his family, nearly knocking all of them over. He's giving kisses and being kissed by all of his family members, even the youngest siblings, and almost all of them are in tears. He's giving speeches about how he missed all of them, reuniting with his brothers and sisters, and is just overall beaming in a manner that Keith had never seen in his life. Family was more important to Lance than ever, and while Keith knew this about him already, he felt as if he truly didn't realize it until that moment.

At first, he feels a little out of place. After all, he must look out of place in a Cuban family like this just by looks alone, but also due to the fact that he was standing quite the distance away, feeling oddly shy about the whole ordeal. He finds his eyes wandering to Lance's hands, wanting to hold them for some sort of support or comfort, for Lance was one of the only people in the world who could give that to him. It's not until he starts noticing the eyes of an elderly woman on him, then to Lance with a questioning expression, that Keith knows they're talking about him. He can hear them, but Keith doesn't know a lick of Spanish and it certainly doesn't help with the uncomfortable feeling in this situation.

It's just a few moments later that Lance looks back to Keith and smiles, still pretty teary eyed from the happy reunion with his family. He's making his way over to Keith before he knows it, palm intertwining with his own gloved palms to lead Keith back to his family, this large group of people who seemed to already smile at him and love him without knowing him. It was a sort of love that he could never understand, not because he wasn't welcome to it, but because he had not been loved by a family member in so long that it broke his lungs and ached his chest.

"This is Keith. He saved the world with me!" He shouts the end part to his younger brothers who giggle at Lance, but then beam up towards Keith with shining eyes that make him smile, despite being pretty awkward around kids. Then Lance, suddenly bashful, admits something that makes the both of them flush, Lance more than Keith, "And...he's also my boyfriend. I wanted to bring him home with me."

Before he knows it, Keith is being pulled into a big, full bodied hug. It's not just by his mother, his father, it's by the entire group. The younger siblings are clinging to his legs and the older ones are hugging along with the rest of the family, but Lance's mother is the one that's closest to his heart in the quite literal sense. Her chin rests on his shoulder and the weight of the entire family nearly knocks him over, and Keith has to bury his face so that they can't see his eyes. Never in his life had he felt such a feeling wash over his entire frame, such a feeling of love, adoration, and acceptance. He doesn't tell them that he's half Galra, but he has a feeling that nothing would change if he did. It makes him feel anxious to think about, so he hones all of his energy into holding back tears that threaten to brim over his eyes.

The rest of the day is incredible in more ways than one. Lance's entire family host a large meal for Lance's return, and Keith smiles when Lance boasts about being happy to have Earth food again. The family questions about their travels, mostly to Lance (although Keith has a feeling that it's because they can tell that Keith is squishing Lance's palm underneath the table from all the attention, his own palm clammy and warm now), and they all bring the same light that Lance was able to deliver up in space. His light was brighter down here.

Lance takes Keith and his younger siblings to the beach after this and they tease him about how he doesn't know how to swim, to which Keith retaliates in a joking manner and knocks Lance over into the white sand of the beach, getting some of it into his hair. The only thing the both of them do is laugh though, for there was no room for real arguments when there was such a bright happiness covering the entire expanse of Cuba in this moment, or so it felt like it anyway. The siblings and Lance wrestle Keith in the shallow parts of the water, the parts Keith can sit in and not drown, and Keith nearly chokes on water going up his nostrils more times than he can count, but he finds himself vowing that he can get Lance for that tomorrow. It wasn't important right then.

They return when the sun goes down and the siblings are all put to bed by Lance after they're cleaned, a tiny detail that Keith finds cute, and Keith waits until after he's done to wash the sand off of his body and hair. He's waiting for Lance to get out of the bath when Lance's mother appears with a smile on her face, despite the fact that she looks tired, like she hasn't slept. She probably worried about Lance a lot...

The next thing that happens happens so fast that Keith can't predict it. She presses a soft, friendly kiss against Keith's forehead which makes his eyes expand in surprise before she's smiling even brighter than before.

"Welcome to the family, Keith. We're happy to have you."

The phrase sticks with him even after Lance returns from the shower, and Keith decides not to tell him right away. He can tell him another time, especially when it's time for them and them alone now.

The whole house is still after a long, busy day of so much happening and Keith wonders how such a large family could become so quiet all at once. Lance shows him his room and, somehow, it's nothing surprisingly whatsoever. There are glow in the dark stars littered all over the ceiling, planet wallpaper lining the entire bottom edge of every corner of Lance's room, and a large painting of Saturn on one of the walls in the room. There are, of course, blue painted walls to match. He says that his older sister did all the paint work on his walls.

"Something tells me that she predicted you were going out into space," Keith jokes, arms crossed against his chest as he admires the rest of his room. There's a bunk bed (perhaps he used to share a room with someone?) with an abandoned top and what he assumes to be Lance's bed sheets and pillow on the bottom one along with a desk in the opposite corner of the room and a telescope near the window. There's a swimsuit hanging outside of his dresser and a stained mark on the wood below it that says it must've been wet when Lance had last left it there.

Lance pulls Keith out of his thoughts by grabbing his wrist and pulling Keith on top of him, socked feet nearly slipping and making him crash to the floor instead. He's glad that Lance was there to catch him. The brightest smile comes out of the both of them in that moment as Keith feels that warmth from before overtake him. It's happiness, but a different kind. Perhaps this was what feeling elated felt like, or perhaps it was euphoria. The only sounds that take the entire room is the ocean sounding nearby from the recently opened window, and the sound of both of their breathing.

"I'm so glad you're here..." Lance breathes, fingers carding through Keith's dark hair as they smile at each other, Lance's loose movements and soft tone telling Keith that he was falling asleep. Who could blame him after such a journey?

"I'm glad you asked me. I wouldn't be here without you, y'know?" Lance smiles at that, more than he already was, and Keith can only return it with the deepest hammer in his heart. He was so in love with Lance. It was a feeling that was indescribable by words, by feeling, by any other form itself. It was only something that Keith felt, he was sure of it. It was unlikely that anyone in the entire universe felt this level of love and devotion. Love didn't feel like the proper word for it, even. He was admittedly ashamed to say that "love" was the only word he could think of to describe a feeling that truthfully, in every form, outshines love in it's vibrancy.

"I love you," Keith says anyway with his forehead pressed against Lance's, knowing for a fact that Lance would get it, even though he didn't have to explain that it wasn't enough. He had a feeling that Lance knew it and understood it too. In truth, he would be heartbroken if he didn't, but if Keith could feel something like this and Lance couldn't, then maybe they didn't defeat the Galra after all. It seemed just as impossible as hell freezing over, as all of this being a dream, as Keith not being in love with Lance.

"I love you too," come soft, final words before Lance falls asleep, chest rising and falling in a much softer beat, the fingers stilling in Keith's hair as his head remains on his chest, eyes slipped closed. He looks beautiful like this, even without the brightest of his eyes, and Keith could watch him all day if it weren't so weird. And with the tangling of his fingers in chocolate hair, Keith knows one thing about now, about his future, about Lance.

He'd found home.

**Author's Note:**

> some soft klance is always good for the soul, even if its super damn short like this. it wasnt meant to be long anyway it was meant to be more soft than anything (i literally didnt even proofread it idc). i was listening to the same koda song over and over while writing this one (one of the lyrics is the title). thanks for reading!


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